THE Alaskan Engineering Commission, which is to build 

 the government railroad from Seward on the Pacific 471 

 miles to Fairbanks in the interior, has received a permit 

 from the forest service to cut 85 million feet of timber in the 

 Chugach national forest for use in constructing the new line. 

 The permit was issued by the district forester at Portland, 

 Ore., who has direct supervision of the Alaskan forests, and 

 is in conformity with the act of March 4, last, which author- 

 ized the Secretary of Agriculture to permit the Alaskan En- 

 gineering Commission and the Navy Department to take from 

 the national forests free of charge earth, stone, and timber 

 for use in government works. The timber will be cut in des- 

 ignated areas along the right-of-way of the proposed railroad, 

 which runs through the Chugach national forest for several 

 miles. 



Experiments and tests of Alaskan spruce and hemlock are 

 being made at the Forest Service Laboratory at Seattle, Wash- 

 ington, and so far have substantiated the opinion of forest- 

 ers that Alaskan timber is sufficiently strong for practically 

 all structural purposes. While these tests are going on forest 

 service employees in Alaska are marking the timber to be cut 

 along the proposed railroad, the cutting to be done so that 

 only mature trees are taken, the young trees being left unin- 

 jured and the condition of the forest improved. 



This cut of 85 million feet will be the largest amount of 

 timber ever felled on the Alaskan forests in one operation, 

 and at the average rate per thousand board feet obtained for 

 timber sold from the Chugach forest during the fiscal year 

 1914, it is worth approximately $145,000 on the stump. It will 

 be nearly twice as much as the total quantity of national for- 

 est timber now cut and used annually for local purposes 

 throughout Alaska, but only a little more than one-tenth of 

 the estimated annual growth of the Alaskan forests. The two 

 national forests of Alaska contain about 78 billion feet of mer- 



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